


That Silent Scream

by Silverydust



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other, POV First Person, Psychological Drama, Slowly going mad, Trapped In Own Mind, dubious ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 00:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19779328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverydust/pseuds/Silverydust
Summary: 'What is sanity? And what is madness?''Where does one stop and the other take over?'I'd thought of this a lot. After all, for one imprisoned inside one's own mind, what could one do but think?Yet as time went on, I began to wonder... was 'I' the person thinking?That Silent Screamis the reflection of a person trapped in their own mind.





	That Silent Scream

**Author's Note:**

> A short story inspired by sleepless hours in the dark (and a bit of introspection).

Blackness.

For the longest time, blackness was all I knew.

Blackness, so deep it's there and not there at the same time. Incorporeal yet tangible, heavy but weightless.

It was suffocating.

And liberating.

* * *

Colors.

I knew the word, of course. Color, and red and yellow and green and blue. And some complex ones that mixed the basic shades; violet, scarlet, aquamarine…

They were words used to describe colors.

But I had long forgotten their respective hues.

Once I even wondered whether black was the result of all colors combined and whether I would make out these colors within black, if only I squint just so.

That notion was dismissed since then.

In this never ending existence, only one color mattered.

And it was black.

* * *

Silence.

Silence and darkness. They were my sole companions since I was cursed to this place.

It was the silence that I hated the most.

Sightlessness, I could endure.

Soundlessness, however, I despised. Nothing, nothing was worse than utter stillness, when one couldn't even comfort oneself with one's own voice, as if the world was forever holding its breath.

It was the silence of the dead. For the living was never so quiet. There was always something from them, a sound of a movement, a hiss of an inhale, a thump of a heartbeat.

Yes. It was the silence of the departed.

But then even the dead should not be forced to endure this silence. No. This silence was for those accursed. A silence in which one prayed for a sound, and was disappointed.

Not a peep would escape as I stomp through unseen landscapes. My movements inspired no vibration, and my shouts, no resonance.

It was as if there was no air.

But that could not be true, for I breathed it with each inhale.

* * *

The virtue of thoughts was a complex topic.

In this miserable piece of hell, thoughts were one of the few things I truly owned and controlled. Yet thoughts grew stagnant. For what use were thoughts when one could not express them? What use were they when their processes led to nothing?

I was trapped, by those stronger than I, inside my own mind. Thoughts were as useless as my meager resistance against the fiends who trapped me here.

But they did kept me from going mad, from the silence.

To escape the silence, I sank into my thoughts.

* * *

So imagine my surprise, when, at a point of this wretched existence, I heard a laugh.

It was not a joyous laugh. More mocking than merry. I blindly turned myself this way and that, trying to catch its source from its fading echoes. I had no luck.

For a time thereafter, I tried to convince myself that the scornful laughter was but a delusion, a phantasm in the form of sound, conjured to jeer. But that laugh was sounded again, and again, and again. Originating from everywhere and nowhere, echoing around the dark emptiness until every corner was filled with it, and always taunting; it pealed at the most inopportune times, like the buzzing of a particularly irritating mosquito.

It was becoming more and more frequent, too. Frequent and mocking enough that I almost wished for the old ghastly silence. Almost.

Then, just as I was sure I could bear it no more, the cachinnation stopped.

And in its place was a voice.

It was a beautiful voice, neither deep nor high, a rich voice that's neither old nor young.

_Pathetic_.

That's the first word that voice spoke.

I had no doubt it was me that word was labeling. And I was indignant. But I ignored it, as was proper when dealing phantoms.

_Coward_.

The voice was merciless and cruel.

_Insipid_.

I let it flow through my consciousness like an errant thought.

_Deranged_.

I breathed.

_Soft._

_Inept._

…

It chose a new word to deride every time it spoke. And my patience was worn with each word, bit by bit, from flimsy cloth to threadbare tatters to a single string. Then that string snapped.

_Shut up_. I thought, at nowhere and no one -- at the voice.

_Idiot_. The voice snarked back.

We traded insults for a while -- the voice seemingly possessing an unending supply of them -- before I decided to try a different approach.

_Who are you?_ I must be mad, conversing with a delusion as if it were a person.

_I am you_. Came the reply.

_So you are my imagination._ I mused.

_No, imbecile. I am you._ The derision in the tone prominent as it would be in a person.

_How can you be me?_ I was confused.

_Why can't I?_

_I was birthed, by a person._

_So was I._

_Birthed?_

_Yes._

_By whom?_

_You._

I asked no more after that. And the voice was quiet too.

Our relationship changed a little since that conversation. What used to be one-sided jeering became two-sided, and sometimes, we talked too.

_Do you remember what colors look like?_ I questioned once, in a bout of melancholy, half expecting a negative answer.

_Yes_. The voice said, surprisingly. _They look like various shades of black._

The blackness never quite bothered me anymore. Nor does the silence. For I seemed to find a companion, in me.

Maybe I had finally gone mad.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment, _please_


End file.
